Honors Language Arts 12

Semester A: Advanced Composition
English 12A Honors focuses on learning to write with confidence and mastery. Emphasis is placed on building language flexibility, improving sentence structure, and mastering the writing process. Students create, revise, and edit six writing projects that are designed to help them take their writing to the next level. As an Honors course, emphasis is placed on project-based instruction and increased reading and writing opportunities. In this thought-provoking writing course, students prepare themselves for the demands of college and/or the job market by developing their writing skills. Through text readings, videos, interactive PowerPoint presentations, practice activities, workbook questions, interactive skills challenges, discussions, writing projects, and other activities students demonstrate their mastery of the writing process. Students will integrate the 6-Traits of Writing (i.e., ideas and content, organization, voice, word choice, sentence fluency, and conventions) to all of their writing. As an Honors course, emphasis will be placed on additional reading and writing project-based instruction. Students will create projects including a short story, expository essay, functional document, persuasive essay, literary analysis, and research paper. Through the engaging activities in English 12A Honors, students become more mature and accomplished writers.

Semester B: British Literature
In English 12B Honors, students experience a survey of dynamic British literature from the ancient epic poem of Beowulf to more contemporary pieces by authors such as George Orwell and Doris Lessing. Emphasis is placed on major literary movements, British authors and classics, and the impact of historical events on literary works. In English 12B Honors, students gain a better understanding of English masterpieces as well as their own writing. As an Honors course, emphasis is placed on project-based instruction and increased reading and writing opportunities. Engaging videos, interesting readings, and interactive activities provide students with pragmatic opportunities to apply reading comprehension and writing skills to their lives. Students work through interactive lessons, completing several self-check activities and quizzes. In each unit, students complete an exam as well as writing projects that include a personal narrative, a research document, a literary response, a descriptive essay, an expository essay, and a persuasive composition. Students also participate in daily discussions and teacher feedback is provided throughout the course. English 12B Honors covers the content and skills in English 12B as well as providing additional project-based instruction and increased reading and writing opportunities.

Materials

Required Reading:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (Semester A)
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (Semester B)
The Alchemist by Paulo Coehlo (Semester B)
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (Semester B)
Hamlet by William Shakespeare (Semester B)

You-Choose Novels:
1984 by George Orwell
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Othello by Julius Lester
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley